Maths departments offered grants to reshape degree programmes

UK mathematics departments are being offered grants of up to £500,000 to develop degree programmes “for the future” as enrolments stall and institutions cut their provision.

The money is being made available by the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences (CaMS) to “fund innovation in maths teaching and curriculum design” amid threats to the future of the subject.

On 16 August a record 100,000 pupils will receive their A-level maths results and it has been the most popular subject to study at A level for 10 years, yet interest in taking the subject at degree level has remained flat.

A report produced for CaMS by Paul Wakeling, an education professor at the University of York, shows that the proportion of total undergraduate enrolments in maths fell from 34 in every 1,000 in 2012-13 to 29 in every 1,000 by 2021-22.

Enrolments only grew by 6 per cent over the same period, while other subjects experienced growth of more than a quarter, the report says. Much of the growth that did happen was found in the more elite universities. 

The report also highlights:

• There are stark regional differences in student enrolments, with the east of England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber under-represented and the opposite true for London, northwest England, northeast England and Scotland
• Research-intensive universities boast the lion’s share of maths students, with the Russell Group accounting for 58 per cent of first-year undergraduate enrolments in 2021-22 after a “striking shift” away from lower-tariff institutions
• The subject “has a lower proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students than the sector average and has seen a shift towards more advantaged students over time”.

Professor Wakeling said there were “clear patterns in how the undergraduate population skews in terms of geographical location, sex, socio-economic background and the sort of institution where the subject is most likely to be studied”.

“There is a danger of an unhelpful feedback loop whereby maths becomes the preserve of a narrower slice of the population,” he added.

These difficulties in recruitment have led many departments to cut back their maths provision. Oxford Brookes University has announced plans to close its maths courses while staffing numbers have been cut at other institutions including the University of Brighton and Birkbeck, University of London.

The “Maths Degrees for the Future” project will use funding provided by trading company XTX Markets to attempt to increase the overall number of students taking maths degrees.

It will be open to all UK universities looking to “create innovative degree programmes in the mathematical sciences, whilst retaining a core focus on foundational maths”.

CaMS said “a number of grants” will be awarded, with full details of the scheme including application deadlines set to be announced in September 2024.

Jens Marklof, president of the London Mathematical Society that runs the campaign, said maths was “key to the UK’s brightest future – it underpins many of our most urgent technologies such as AI and quantum computing, and is key to solving the nation’s challenges from climate change and epidemiology to national security”.

He said the project showed a commitment to “generate solutions” and “new and transformative ideas from across the community that ensure the sustainability of maths in higher education across all tariff levels”.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com